As communication networks evolve, new demands such as massive Internet of Things (IoT) communications, mission critical communications, and/or high throughput mobile broadband on the mobile network, create new challenges for the networking infrastructure providers to develop innovative and intelligent networking solutions that can deliver optimal connectivity as well as end user service quality. Conventional mobile core networks are not programmable in terms of their functionality and thus, addition of new services can be a difficult and time consuming process.
Although attempts have been made to expose some of the network capabilities, a dedicated network node, such a service control and exposure function (SCEF) is utilized to control such exposures for 3GPP networks. The SCEF acts as an service gateway and/or proxy to a cellular network by providing application programming interfaces (APIs) to enterprises and third party application developers for, in the case of IoT, small data transfers and/or control messages, and uses 3GPP-defined interfaces with the network elements in the mobile core network. However, the SCEF does not provide the scalability and flexibility to address future service needs of evolving communication networks.